D&D General Reification versus ludification in 5E/6E

[Remathilis]

Only in 5.5. This is I think a much broader question.

5.0 hobgoblins had martial advantage that did 2d6 weapon damage as long as they are within 5 ft of an ally. No version of the hobgoblin PC race, from Volo to MotM, has this ability.

People be acting like NPCs and PCs using different rules started in 2024...

 

[Micah Sweet]

5.0 hobgoblins had martial advantage that did 2d6 weapon damage as long as they are within 5 ft of an ally. No version of the hobgoblin PC race, from Volo to MotM, has this ability.

People be acting like NPCs and PCs using different rules started in 2024...

Does that make it a good rule?

 

[Remathilis]

Does that make it a good rule?

Yes?

If you think monsters should be built exactly like PCs and all features interchangeable, D&D and it's like ilk are bad systems for you. I don't want to run a bunch of monsters with the complexity of PCs ever again. I did it for a decade and a half in 3.x and I was so burned out by the end I almost quit TTRPGs. I'm absolutely fine with NPCs and monsters getting special abilities no PC can have.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes?

If you think monsters should be built exactly like PCs and all features interchangeable, D&D and it's like ilk are bad systems for you. I don't want to run a bunch of monsters with the complexity of PCs ever again. I did it for a decade and a half in 3.x and I was so burned out by the end I almost quit TTRPGs. I'm absolutely fine with NPCs and monsters getting special abilities no PC can have.

There are plenty of D&D-style systems that move closer to what I want than 5.5. You can't just claim that all D&D-style games are bad for that when at least one official version was explicitly geared toward it (even if it had its problems). You are just describing your personal preference in a more objective way than I feel is warranted. Not that there's anything wrong with liking what you like of course, but neither of us can legitimately make sweeping statements that our preference is the "right" one.

 

[Remathilis]

There are plenty of D&D-style systems that move closer to what I want than 5.5. You can't just claim that all D&D-style games are bad for that when at least one official version was explicitly geared toward it (even if it had its problems). You are just describing your personal preference in a more objective way than I feel is warranted. Not that there's anything wrong with liking what you like of course, but neither of us can legitimately make sweeping statements that our preference is the "right" one.

No, I said that no version has ever made them interchangeable like that. Martial advantage (to keep the theme) essentially sneak attack at level 3 with different restrictions. You could not give that to a PC for any investment of less than 3 class levels. It would be an auto take at any cost lower than that. You could probably do it in a system where abilities were chunked out like Pathfinder 2e, or Star Wars Saga, but plain D&D makes that balance too difficult.

It's a failing of the class system that makes such abilities hard to interchange. You can build a system where it isn't (I point you to 4e, PF2e, and SW Saga) but D&D has been poor at it with rigid classes. You can do it, but it's not gonna look like 5e (or 3e and earlier).

 

[Maxperson]

I am responding to the notion 2014 "got it right", not some quantum hobgoblin that exists in your mind.

No edition is perfect. 5e did it much better is all.

Edit: Also, just because we think 5e got it right with regard to setting up abilities to explain where the damage came from, does not mean that we think 5e got it right all the way around. We can still think that the damage was low.

 

[Maxperson]

I would love to have a copy of the Bastion rules myself (for adaptation to my preferred system), but I'm not paying $50 for it.

I've looked at them and other than layout and organization, as far as I can tell they are identical to the playtest version, so you already have them.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm not actually sure I agree here, I think this is game design all the way down. The problem is that the gameplay loop, the point of interactions players are "supposed" to have with the game is generally insufficiently ambitious, or too generalized. The game design task does not end with making an encounter last approximately Y rounds and drain Z resources. If anything, that's what's been reified; the baseline evaluation of how encounters work has gone from a tool to guide the secondary encounter design task to a target.

I think that's what drives the overreaction to "balanced encounters are fundamentally a mistake" or "we need to simplify enough I can use HD directly." The problem we're actually dealing with, "how do I know what players can overcome?" is a much harder question, and we keep answering simplified versions of it instead of grappling with it directly.

Yeah, I'm on board with this. I especially like how you framed the transition from tool to target, since I think that gets at how this keeps happening.

Because in D&D, combat encounter design is not really the goal, and yet....there's quantification there....and many designers are going to gravitate to the quantification when a more holistic view of gameplay is necessary.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

5.0 hobgoblins had martial advantage that did 2d6 weapon damage as long as they are within 5 ft of an ally. No version of the hobgoblin PC race, from Volo to MotM, has this ability.

People be acting like NPCs and PCs using different rules started in 2024...

Because that would be unbalanced as a racial ability. However, martial advantage works just fine in a game world if considered to be a class ability.

Narratively speaking, something like: Most hobgoblin societies delight in warfare; and force their young to train in weapon use from the moment they can walk. The typical hobgoblin warrior has spent years honing their ability to cause damage...to a degree most others have not.

That +2d6 damage would essentially represent a couple levels of training in a usually hobgoblin-specific class like some type of fighter or rogue. From narrative standpoint, yes, this opens up the possibility that a PC COULD learn and obtain that ability; under the right circumstances, with the right investment.

 

[Clint_L]

Yes?

If you think monsters should be built exactly like PCs and all features interchangeable, D&D and it's like ilk are bad systems for you. I don't want to run a bunch of monsters with the complexity of PCs ever again. I did it for a decade and a half in 3.x and I was so burned out by the end I almost quit TTRPGs. I'm absolutely fine with NPCs and monsters getting special abilities no PC can have.

Same. I don't need a lot of unnecessary complexity from my stormtroopers. They're mostly just there to be an obstacle, and if the story changes such that one of them becomes more important, I can adjust on the fly. Please don't make the description more complicated than it has to be, and certainly don't give them anything approaching the complexity of a character sheet. If I need a particular stormtrooper to stand out, I can do that. Super easy, barely an inconvenience.

That's basically the entire design philosophy of 5e: give the DM enough to work with, and trust them to fill in the details to the extent they desire. It's built assuming a significant level of trust and cooperation at the table, and that has obviously worked very well for it. I think that is one of the main ways that it hearkens back to 1e.

If a player at my table demanded to know why the guard captain rolls 2d10 for their longsword, my response will be "because of their training an experience, just like your berserker adds 2d6 to their damage roll once per round." If the player isn't satisfied with that, then that's their problem; I ain't dwelling on it. But, to be honest, not one player has ever asked me a question like that, because they are too busy being into the game. A lot of these comments seem to come from folks who either play at much more adversarial tables, or like hypotheticals involving very adversarial tables. I might enjoy these discussions on a forum, but I'm never going to be part of an adversarial table, so mostly these sorts of debates feel like arguing about how many angels can fit on the end of a pin.